I have a few IPS licenses and I can not fault them in terms of the quality of their software. 4.x forward has been leaps in features. In this recent patch, they've actually done a good job listening to their community feedback when it came to "subscriptions".
One of the most useful features that help integrate social media and IPS is the ability to link those social media accounts in the backend. Once you've accomplished this, you can then set users who you trust to "Promote" that content with the push of a button. Once that button is pushed, you can design how that post will look - including setting images. After that, the content is published directly to your social media page. So , no more copy and pasting. That one thing saves so much time and also helps push your community to your social media accounts which drives user interaction back to your forum. The embrace of social media by that development team is unparalleled. They really understand that it's social media that drives traffic to your forum - not the other way around like it use to be.
With that said, their customer service is still lacking for the price you pay. 99% of the issues I've had (bug related) they didn't understand the language I was using. I resorted to using OBS to take a video screen capture to show them and then things got a little better. Most of the responses to help I got were "That's beyond the scope of our support - please post in our community for help".
I also own a licnese of Woltlab and Alexander the lead developer is great. He's fast to respond to inquiries and even helped me with some custom coding for a front page.
Some features I personally like to have:
Thread Prefix -Xenforo has(multi prefixes as an addon), Woltlab has (multiple prefixes out of box), IPS doesn't have but has an addon that only supports one prefix.
Advanced Forms - Xenforo has (paid addon), IPS has (paid addon), Woltlab doesn't have that I'm aware
Join User Group - Xenforo has (paid addon), IPS doesn't have, Woltlab has out of the box
Promote to Social Media - Xenfor doesn't have (not that I'm aware), IPS has out of box, Woltlab doesn't have that I'm aware
Automated Actions - Xenforo doesn't have (not that I'm aware), IPS has (paid addon called Rules), Woltlab has called EZ Community Bot
So, you can see each has it's pro's and cons. I guess it depends on what you, the owner/admin want out of the software. It also depends on you the owner what you're willing to deal with in terms of customer service. Each software has it's own unique niche and end users.
For me, personally, I would switch everything to Xenforo if it had a great Automated Actions Bot like the EZ Community Bot in Woltlab and it had the Promote to Social Media like IPS has. Those two things for me would really make Xenforo great - but that's just me personally and everyone has their opinions on what they want to see in the software they choose to use. I guess that's why this discussion about "what is better" is really hard to decide because at the end of the day it depends on what individuals want out of it.
